Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system which includes an image processing apparatus and a printing apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Recently, a principal use case of a printing apparatus is to receive print jobs from a plurality of PC's (personal computers) connected via a network and perform printing based on information included in the received print jobs. In the use case like this, to improve security, a function of performing user authentication based on the password added to the print job, and then performing the print job only when the user authentication is successful but not performing the print job when the user authentication is not successful has been provided conventionally in the printing apparatus (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-156834).
Here, for example, even in a case where an external device such as a print controller or the like is connected to the printing apparatus like this, it is of course necessary to perform the user authentication also to a print job transferred from the external device. That is, user information has to be added to the externally transferred print job, and thus the printing apparatus performs the print job only when the user authentication is successful.
When the print job is transferred from the print controller to the printing apparatus which performs the user authentication, the user information such as a user name, a password and the like is indispensable for the print job. However, in the conventional system in which the print job is transferred from a PC to the print controller, an RIP (raster image processor) process is performed by the print controller to generate image data, and the generated image data is transferred to and printed by the printing apparatus, the following operation is performed. That is, even in a case where the user authentication will not be successful obviously because the user information does not exist in the print job, the print controller inevitably transfers the relevant print job to the printing apparatus and thus the printing apparatus performs the user authentication. In other words, since the print controller transfers the print job not having the user information to the printing apparatus, the printing apparatus performs the essentially-unnecessary operations of receiving the print job, analyzing the received print job, and performing the user authentication based on the analyzed print job. Besides, in a case where the printing apparatus is in a power-saving state set by, e.g., a sleep function, the set power-saving state is released due to the above unnecessary operations, and the printing apparatus thus returns to the normal state to perform the user authentication, so that the power which should not be consumed essentially is consumed.